I wish I had a white induction cooktop. Black shows every streak & speck of dust. It's true that induction is a breeze to clean. Good, because with a black induction cooktop, you'll be cleaning it a LOT.

Black induction is no different regards to showing dust than other black smoothtops. It's considerably better regards to reduced incident of burned-on spills and splatters being that the surface doesn't heat other than via contact with the cooking utensil.

I am already cleaning a black gas stove with heavy grates a LOT. A smooth surface seems like a major WIN, no matter the color. I went to a really nice appliance store today several towns away and was told the only manufacturer of a white induction cooktop is Summit and to stay away from that brand. So now I don’t know what I’m going to do. Fortunately, I have some time to figure it out.

@awm03 Thank you for the great tips.

Summit does offer white induction cooktops in various sizes. Advantage: they are inexpensive. Cafe and Monogram offer silver cooktops. Hestan offers one in metallic silver though at $3900 it's ridiculously overpriced.

It is easy to keep an induction cooktop clean. I just use Mrs. Meyers Multi-Surface and a paper towel.

@awm03: "I wish somebody would make a gray or white pebbled surface"

The glass must be perfectly flat to maximize contact with the pots and pans.

"The glass must be perfectly flat to maximize contact with the pots and pans."

Nope. The induction field extends above the surface for about a quarter to a half inch. I use cast iron skillets with the heat ring underneath them. The pans sit about a quarter inch above the glass -- they work great. Same with my pans that are flat on the bottom but have a very slight wobble -- they cook just fine too. Pebbled surface -- more like a speckled glass. It was smooth to the touch.

@awm03: "The pans sit about a quarter inch above the glass -- they work great.

That only tells you that the induction elements kept working, not whether they work efficiently to heat a pan suspended above or not in full contact with an element.

Oh c'mon, wdccruise, what a quibble. Do you think my 40 years cooking experience wouldn't give me a sense about how well my pans work on my new induction cooktop?

Do you have experience with cast iron with heat rings on your induction? I'll bet not.

No. You would have to perform comparison tests to know.

I'd never heard of a "heat ring" which is apparently, "the small rim around the outside of the bottom of many (usually earlier) skillets and some other pieces. Its purpose is to raise the pan's bottom slightly from the old wood range cooktop so as to equalize heat."* But the pan is still in contact with, not above, the induction element so that doesn't tell one anything about whether raising a pan above an induction cooktop results in less efficient heating.

*http://griswoldandwagner.com/faq.html

@awm03

Do you have a link or photo of these rings you are using?

Kevinande, the ring is integral to the skillet bottom, & is formed in the casting. Look up "cast iron skillet, heat ring" on the internet & you'll see lots of pictures.

Technically, a pan on an induction cooktop contacts the glass surface. It does not directly touch the induction unit beneath the glass, nor does the glass get hot to conduct/apply heat into the pan.

Are the inexpensive white ones any good?

@palimpsest: "Are the inexpensive white ones any good?"

There are a few owner reviews at Home Depot and Appliances Connection. Interestingly, these Summit cooktops have induction-element timers which commenters on another thread say they find useful.

I had only seen two burner white, and brands like Kenyon (who no longer seems to offer white) that seemed to be geared toward boats (?)

@awm03

@wdccruise

I was curios about the comments above so did a little research, not much. In an impromptu experiment. I took a pot of water to a boil and then turned the power down to the minimal amount of power needed to sustain a boil. I then picked the pan up and suspended it in the air to see if there would be an effect. As expected the boil stopped almost immediately. Turning the power up you could see the intensity decrease the further away from the surface you got until the filed was broken completely. Eventually the pan was too far away for the field to have any effect. This tells us there is a direct correlation between distance between the pan and efficiency. No different than any other cooking surface. The further you remove the pan from the source of the heat the less heat makes it to the pan. With my unit the field does extend about a 1/2 in maybe 3/4 (i did not measure it). While the pan will operate suspended above the glass surface, it is not working at peak efficiency. So you will have to use more energy to complete a task that would require less energy if the pan were in contact with the surface. If anyone can do the math I think it would be interesting.

I looked at my two pans with heat rings. The rings are 1/8 of an inch deep, maybe even a smidgen less. That's close enough for the induction field to work effectively on the pans. I don't think holding a pan 1/2 inch above the burner is comparable nor particularly accurate.

kevinande, maybe a better experiment would be to put 4 coins or washers around the perimeter of the hob, outside the circle demarcation, & rest a pan on top of them. Maybe put pieces of paper towel under the coins/washers to reduce risk of scratches. Then test pan heating. That would better simulate the depth of a heat ring & the pan would be more level than your hand held test.

It's my understanding that the strength of the magnetic field decreases as the square of the distance. If we assume that the cooktop glass is 1/8" thick and a pan is raised 1/8" off the glass thereby doubling the distance, the magnetic field would be reduced by a factor of four (i.e., two squared is 4). I put a pan with 1 cup of water on an induction burner (on boost) and waited for the water to boil. Raising the pan even a short distance away from the glass significantly reduced the visible rate of boiling after a few seconds. So I think it's important that the bottom of a pan be as flat as possible and that there be no gap between it and the cooktop. Of course, the cookware plays a role: A thick, cast iron pan probably spreads the heat more efficiently than a thin, stainless steel one does and at least a portion of a cast iron pan with a "heat ring" would be as close to the induction element as possible. Nevertheless, I would think that a cast iron pan without a heat ring would be most efficient because the entire bottom of the pan would be as close to the induction element -- beneath the glass -- as possible.

I cook with both types regularly -- cast iron with & without heat rings. I see no difference in performance, honestly. The heat ringed pans are well within the electromagnetic field, evidently, so even if the physics says that there *should* be a loss of power, it's negligible. The electromagnetic field must be strong enough that a 1/8 inch heat ring doesn't create enough distance to start worrying about inverse square laws yet.

Please try a cast iron pan with a heat ring, then get back to me. Otherwise, it's a silly quibble.

@awn03: "Please try a cast iron pan with a heat ring, then get back to me."

As quoted above, the heat ring's "purpose is to raise the pan's bottom slightly from the old wood range cooktop so as to equalize heat." I don't have an "old wood range cooktop". I would have to buy a such a pan. As it's likely to perform worse than a flat-bottom pan, there's no reason to buy one.